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The Business Case for

Collaboration with Academia

- Driving Innovation and R&D

Lero

19th June 2013

Lero © 2013

ISIN Business Breakfast

Lero© 2011 Lero © 2013

Why Ireland Needs SW Research

• Supply of high quality graduates & postgraduates • Primary & secondary school programmes (Coder Dojo, Scratch, Junior Cert,

Leaving Cert)

• Undergraduate modules taught by active researchers

• Conversion courses

• Masters programmes designed with industry input

• PhDs and postdocs with cutting edge research experience

• Research delivering software productivity • Methodologies & Standards for Software Development

• Software performance

• Research delivering software quality & reliability • High Integrity Software

• Software Security & Privacy

• Autonomous & Adaptive Systems

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Mission

• Lero will enhance the quality and

competitiveness of the software industry

in Ireland through shared projects,

knowledge transfer and education

• Lero will deliver world-leading research

in software engineering with a special

emphasis on Evolving Critical Systems

Lero© 2011 Lero © 2013

Lero: a National Centre

Dublin City University NUI Galway

University of Limerick

Dundalk IT

Trinity College Dublin

University College Dublin

Lero is an SFI CSET, founded

in 2005 and extended in 2011.

Awarded over €60M in

research funding from multiple

sources

Over 30 academics, 30+

Research Fellows & Postdocs

and c.100 PhD students

Output: 250+ journal papers,

25 books and over 500

conference papers. 20+

patents & contributions to 5

published international

standards.

Worked with over 100 software

companies in Ireland & EU

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Evolving Critical Systems

• Evolving – Software is meant to change, both at design/revision time and at run-time

– Lero’s research focuses on methods and tools for designing software that can be changed or that can change itself without degradation

• Critical – Much of today’s software is mission-, safety- or business-critical

– Lero is researching methods and tools to improve the integrity of and confidence levels in critical software

• Systems – Expertise in software engineering needs to be coupled with domain

knowledge

– Lero has existing partnerships & expertise in medical devices, space, future cities and financial services

– We will continue to seek domain-related partners for collaborative research

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Key Focus Areas

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• Adaptive & Autonomous Systems

– Systems that learn & respond to their environments

• Software Performance

– Large complex systems

– Multicore embedded & massively parallel systems

• Methodologies & Standards

– Lean, Agile & Global methods

– Open Sourcing & Innovation

– Standardised SW Development processes

• Security & Privacy

– New approaches to security and privacy and the trade-offs between them

– Digital forensics

• High Integrity Software

– Formal methods & safety use cases

– Model-based approaches

Lero© 2011 Lero © 2013

Some Examples of Lero Research

1. Smarter Cities

– In conjunction with Intel Labs Europe, Dublin City Council and IBM

2. Software Product Lines

– Use of models to gain efficiencies

3. Adaptive Security and Privacy (Cloud, smart buildings)

– In conjunction with United Technologies and IBM

4. Parallelisation of code to optimise use of multicore hardware

– In conjunction with Movidius and IBM

5. Architectural Recovery and Preservation

– In conjunction with several financial services companies

6. Performance Evaluation in Large Systems

– In conjunction with IBM

7. Autonomous Space Systems

– In conjunction with NASA and ESA and EU FP6 Project ASCENS

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Funding Sources

• Academics funded by Universities – Mixture of teaching & research

• CSET funding from Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) – Industry contributions valued at over 40% of SFI funding

• FP7 funding from European Union – Collaborative projects with other EU research institutes and industry

• PRTLI/HEA funding (Irish Government – Dept. of Education) – Infrastructure & education

– IRC programmes

• IDA/EI /Industry funding (Irish Government – Dept. of Industry) – Innovation vouchers

– Collaborative research e.g. Innovation Partnerships

– Industry Led Research Programmes & Technology Centres

• Industry funding – Collaborative/Contract research

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Thank you!

http://www.lero.ie/